THE Tama Bell Brass (well, actually bell bronze), there is somehow no way past this snare if you are into drums and I kept admiring it, but I kinda accepted a while ago that I will never get my sticks on it ... until Tama announced a re-issue for their 50th birthday. When I saw the price tag, I again accepted that Ill just have to ignore it and kinda forgot about it again ... until one day last week this showroom model pops up with a really substantial discount and I thought "ok, **** it, here is your chance to try that snare and actually hear it at least once in your life".

I have been playing it for 3 days now, still getting warm with it. My first impression has been somewhat sobering: no angel choirs singing, no golden light when opening the box, just a really dark, heavy lump of metal. I started tuning it (and it was tuned horribly out of the box and it actually took me quite some time to tune it properly somehow). When I finally started to hit it, I really liked it - not heavenly angle choir kind of emotions, but yea, it has a really beautiful sustain, a great fat die cast rimshot attack, it sounds warm and fat at any tuning somehow, huge at low, mid, and way up to very high tunings (where other snares kinda choke out sometimes). Im not a big fan of that snare mechanic and I'm really confident that my snares wires are actually damaged - already contacted the shop about that. feel like my 24strand Puresound brass snare wires on my Ludwig sound better with much better adjustability. The internal muffler is much cooler than I thought (I considered it a gimmick before). So I kinda exclusively played that snare now and I decided that I need to hear my Black Beauty as reference for perspective.

When I listened to the snares back to back, the differences was actually suprisingly small and DAMN, does that Black Beauty rock - I just love it, maybe even more than before now!! In my eyes, the Black Beauty with die cast hoops sounds a little more flat and focused with a little less sustain and less warmth & body, the snare wires initial response of the Ludwig sounds better, but then again Im curious about the Bell Brass with actually working snare wires. The Bell Brass has just this awesome huge tone, very warm sustain, the sound with internal muffler can be brought fairly close to the shorter sustain of the Black Beauty. Then I started to record stuff with some background guitars and somehow I started to really dig the Bell Brass, the listening difference was actually quite suprising: didnt win against my Black Beauty on the raw drum track, but in a mix it sounded really really awesome!! Maybe thats the secret of that snare?

By the way: the bronze shell is a work of art, absolutely flawless craftsmanship. The rest of the snare is alright, std Tama diecast hoops, that roller lift off snare system is that of the 80s model, which looks a little flimsy for nowadays standards, the internal muffler knob feels like chromed plastic, my snare wires were definitely damaged with different strand lengths so that I have a constant rattle unless I choke the drum with really high wire tension. Worth 4k euro? No, not from a parts point of view, my drum mix with my band has never sounded better though - really hard to put a number on that!!

Either way, Ill have to give it a lot more time, neither am I a very good player, nor am I a sound engineer. Who knows what an audio engineer with a capable drummer would actually get from these snares? ;)

Hope you enjoyed the comparison - Ill certainly will make a few more in the upcoming weeks,
Simon

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